North Carolina

Innovations

Nurses come to the home of families with newborns to perform a comprehensive assessment of risk factors and provide education and support, leading to better connections to community resources, improved parenting skills, higher quality and safety in the home environment, and significantly fewer infant medical emergencies.

A traveling team of certified diabetes educators (including a nurse, pharmacist, and dietitian) regularly visits rural clinics to help coordinate diabetes care with clinicians and educate and coach African-American patients with diabetes, leading to improved glycemic control and the potential for meaningful cost savings.

A dedicated inpatient unit features a physical environment, staffing, policies, and services tailored to women with severe perinatal depression, leading to improvements in outcomes and high levels of patient satisfaction.

An outpatient clinic pilot tested use of widely available, inexpensive, easily implemented consumer videoconferencing technology to provide Spanish-speaking patients with an offsite interpreter during appointments, generating high levels of satisfaction among both patients and clinicians.

A school district's multifaceted, collaborative initiative to reduce the impact of asthma includes multiple policies and subsequent programs such as electronic monitoring, case management, and stakeholder-specific education, leading to fewer asthma-related absences and better academic performance, behavior, health, and quality of life for students with asthma.

Pharmacists provide ongoing chronic care management support to employees and their physicians, leading to greater adherence to recommended care processes and self-management behaviors, lower costs, higher productivity, and a significant return on investment.

A public school system renovated the athletic track at the system's only high school and promoted it as an attractive place to exercise, leading to increased use of the track by students, individual residents, and community groups, and to anecdotal reports of weight loss and improved cardiovascular health.

Local government agencies and nonprofit groups improved the nutrition and physical activity practices of childcare centers by refurbishing a local park, training staff on healthy eating and exercise, and planting gardens at each center.